YOU want to be a good mate. You want to be there for your friends when they celebrate big milestones in their life — getting married, popping out a baby or having a birthday ending in ‘0’. And, it’s fun.

But being a supportive friend is getting increasingly untenable for your wallet as one event after another demand a bigger share of your money. And it never just stops at one thing.

Take for example the following scenario: A close friend is getting married but he/she is having a destination wedding in Bali. To get yourself and your partner to the wedding, and you don’t want to slum it like backpackers, it will cost you:

-Flights: $1600 (for two people return on Virgin in September, according to Webjet)

-Accommodation for five nights: $1250 (At a four-star hotel, according to Trivago)

-Expenses/food: $1500 (including tours and decent restaurants)

-Wedding gift: $200

Assuming you’ll deck yourself out in threads you already own, your friend’s marital bliss will cost you over $4550 to witness. While you’ll probably have a great time, that holiday you were planning to Canada will probably need to be pushed back another year.

And that’s not counting all the activities leading up to the wedding itself. Engagement parties often require gift giving too now with many couples opting to set up a gift registry for the event. It’s not unheard of for engagement presents to cost $100 per person, especially as some gift registries don’t give you a lower cost option.

Add to that at least one, and often more than one, of the following: bridal shower, kitchen tea and hens/bucks — all of which also requires gift-giving.

It’s also becoming trendy to have destination hens and bucks weekends away. Sometimes, it’s a bunch of friends driving a couple of hours outside the city and camping for the night but sometimes, the wishes can be quite extravagant.

Take Cherry Picked Travel, a travel company which packages overseas bucks and hens holidays. A couple of months ago, the business sent out a media release proclaiming the rising popularity of “ditching the average buck’s and hen’s parties and heading to some of the world’s most famous destinations to party it up”.

Cherry Pick Travel said its Las Vegas Party Package was one of the most popular in its portfolio. From $2500, it includes five nights accommodation, flights to Vegas, transfers and access to a bunch of Vegas clubs. The media release quoted groom-to-be Matt who said: “I only plan to get married once, so why not do it right and go out with a bang. I want an experience that I’ll never forget.”

Which is all very nice for Matt, but what about his friends? Matt wants a singular experience he’ll only do once but if his mates are in their late 20s or early 30s, then there’s a fair chance Matt’s wedding, and the lead-up to it, is one of only several they’ll have to fund in a span of a few years. For them, it’s not a “once” experience.

It’s hard for people who aren’t making as much money as their mates, like Jennifer Aniston’s character in Friends With Money.Source:News Limited

But it’s not just weddings and its accoutrements that are costing everyone big time.

There are the birthday dinners at fancypants, hatted restaurants which could set you back at least $100 per person, and that’s before the drinks.

Plus, once your friends start popping out babies, it’s a whole other ball game. Starting with the baby shower, you’ll forever be spending surprisingly big money for tiny pieces of organic fabric that couldn’t possibly cost $60 to manufacture. As each kid gets older, you’ll be giving an equally dazzling, but expensive, gift with each passing year.

In particular, problems can arise when you have friends on different income levels. Friends who are public school teachers aren’t going to find the money for everything as easily as those who work in banking.

But if you happen to be someone who doesn’t get married or have children (either by choice, circumstance or because of the law), you’ll never really get the chance to recoup all the money you’ve shelled out. But at least you’ve been a good friend.

What are your experiences? Have you found being a good friend is burdensome on your wallet? Share your comments below.

Are there other cost of living pressures that’s got you down? Email wenlei.ma@news.com.au to tell your story.

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